It is told that while the battle was raging the elephant took the greatest care of his master. And when the animal saw that the king was faint from his wounds, he knelt down carefully that Porus might not fall. Then with his trunk he drew out the darts that were left in the body of the king. Alexander had seen how bravely his enemy had fought, As he watched him riding from the field, he thought he would like to speak with so great a warrior, and he sent to ask him to return. He himself went out to meet the king, and was amazed at his great height and at his beauty. When Alexander asked Porus how he wished to be treated, he answered, ‘As a king.’ ‘For my own sake I will do that,’ replied the great king; ‘ask a boon for thy sake.’ ‘That,’ said Porus, ‘containeth all.’ As was his way, Alexander treated the fallen king right royally, giving back to him his kingdom and adding to it new territories. Two cities were built close to the battlefield. One was named Bucephala, after Alexander’s famous horse which, some say, was wounded and died after the battle. But others tell that Bucephalus had died shortly before the battle of old age, for he had lived for thirty years. The king grieved for the loss of his noble steed as for the loss of a friend. This terrible battle made the Macedonians still more unwilling to advance farther into India. Before them lay a desert which would take eleven days to cross. The soldiers could not face a long march in a strange land, without water and without guides. When Alexander ordered the army to advance, the Macedonians who had followed him loyally through every difficulty, refused to obey. Nothing he could say would make them advance a step farther. ‘There they stood, looking hard at the ground with tears trickling down their cheeks, yet resolute still not to go forward.’ Then Alexander dismissed them in anger. But the next day he sent for them again and told them that he was going to advance. They, if they chose to forsake him in a hostile land, could go back to Macedon. Still in anger the king left them and went to his tent, and shut himself up for two days, refusing to see any of his companions. Perhaps he thought his obstinate Macedonians would yield. But although it grieved them to thwart their king, the soldiers remained firm. On the third day Alexander left his tent and offered sacrifices to the gods, as he always did before beginning a new adventure. But the signs were unfavourable, and against this the king was not proof. So he sent to tell the army that he had determined to lead them in the direction of home. In a transport of joy the faithful Macedonians hastened to the king’s tent. Some of them wept as they thanked ‘the unconquered king that he had permitted himself to be conquered for once by his Macedons.’ CHAPTER CI ALEXANDER IS WOUNDED Alexander determined to begin the homeward journey by sailing down the Hydaspes to the Indus in order to reach the ocean.